Thursday, 8 May 2008

Winter in Kemer 2007/08

Life in Kemer this winter has been both wonderful and at the same time, very stressful.

There is no doubt that as a winter berth, the liveaboard community, supported by the Marina staff is excellent. The marina itself is in a nice location with a backdrop of the high Taurus Mountains and is small enough to provide a close liveaboard community with so many activities you cannot fail to be entertained. The Navigator Bar is the centre of all activities, together with the Club Room (with excellent library) and Restaurant. This is one of the best facilities we have come across during our travels and of course the key to its success are the wonderful marina staff. Nothing is too much trouble and they will assist readily on any problem you may have.

The other side of the coin is the stress caused by Technical Services in carrying out maintenance work on Stratagem.
The boat was lifted in November and the bottom was in a very sorry state. The use of a Turkish antifouling paint at the beginning of the season had proved to be a mistake and failed to keep fouling off the hull at all. It was time for the complete removal of the bottom paint, and for future protection, have the bottom coated with an epoxy barrier paint prior to re antifouling. This work was completed to a good standard as was other painting and gellcoat repairs – a testament to the quality of the painters.

The problems with the Technical Services arose over what should have been a straightforward re-caulking of the teak decks. Without going into great detail, suffice to say that this straightforward job was a complete *!#^ -up which resulted in a total removal of the deck and replacing it with a new (expensive) teak deck – at my cost of course. Making the decision to renew the deck was only the start – the actual work was a 4 month “nightmare” from start to finish. Without my day to day supervision of the workforce and intervention when things were going wrong I cannot imagine what the end result would have been! In the end though, I have a beautiful new deck, better than the original fitted by Beneteau and which should last for many years. The photos below show some of the key stages:-




All the deck fittings had to be removed and to expose the fittings inside much of the interior had to be removed in the area of the fitting e.g. head linings, cooker extractor in the galley (shown above), doors, locker linings, etc. etc. The original teak deck itself was both screwed and glued, although it was the latter that caused the problem. Removal left hundreds of screw holes to be filled before the new deck could be put on. The solution was a filler and complete epoxy coating of the grp deck surface in preparation for applying the teak planking. The Burmese teak is 12mm thick, although during the preparation in the workshop this became slightly less in the planking finally applied to the deck.



Once the epoxy surface was complete it was very tempting to continue to complete the deck without teak it looked so good! But teak does look better!!



The centre section of the “King-plank” had to be replaced (the left side is out of alignment here) which typifies what they would try and get away with, without me being on top of them every day to ensure work was completed properly. Ensuring the breaker tape (the yellow tape shown in the centre picture above) was inserted prior to the final caulking was a daily battle.

In conclusion, I would not choose to have the work done in Kemer but the end result is equal to any I have seen done in Turkey.
Stratagem was re-launched in April and after a week of recommissioning we were again ready for sea and to start our 2008 cruise.